Lots of the FIRE blogs I read sound like the husband and wife team are perfectly aligned in their goal of FIRE. We’re not. I love to talk about money. I do it for a living. He feels weird about it- not about purchases or investments- he feels weird about discussing our goals, and what we expect to leave our children. It was like pulling teeth to get him to make a will. He didn’t want to discuss life insurance, and he especially didn’t want to talk about retirement.
My husband is the ideal partner for financial independence. He grew up poor with an abhorrence of waste and debt. I learned lots of things from him about managing our home finances, as he’d grown up with parents who were masters at managing on very little income. I was fortunate in meeting him before I had a significant income. I have always been careful to spend within my means, but without his influence, I might have developed some spendy habits.
We grew up entirely differently. My parents are upper middle class, we lived in a beautiful home and went to private schools. Mom and Dad had gone to college and we were expected to do the same. They are financially quite well off and are currently enjoying a lovely retirement. They didn’t mind debt though, and they were usually making a few payments on something or other. They thought that was normal and so did I. I remember reading a personal finance book when I was a teen and telling my dad it would be awesome if you could buy a house by just saving up and not having a mortgage. He told me that nobody could do that.
My husband’s family lived on land adjoining his grandparents. They had chickens before it was fashionable- and an outhouse. His parents weren’t college educated, and they lived in a house his dad built with his own hands. They grew or killed most of the food they ate. No one retired where he grew up- they just worked until they physically couldn’t anymore. Neither one of his parents EVER owned a credit card.
I grew up expecting to go on vacation. My parents went on AT LEAST two vacations a year. So after we’d been married a year or two, I brought up the subject of vacation. He said we “couldn’t afford it”. This was absurd. We certainly could afford it, but I realized that “we can’t afford it” is what he heard to nearly every request at his house that required money.
He adjusted to the idea that vacations were important to me, even if he didn’t care about them. I adjusted to the idea that not all vacations had to be extravagant. I realized that maybe we didn’t need all the things my parents had- my husband hadn’t needed them, and we certainly didn’t need to finance- well anything.
Fast forward to about 6 years ago when I started getting serious about retiring early. At this point, thanks to our 12 years of frugal marriage, we have a big pile of savings that I am planning on using for us to retire early. This is where we can’t see eye to eye- in fact he didn’t even want to talk about it. He didn’t want to retire, and didn’t want me to retire either. He actually implied that I was lazy for not wanting to work anymore. There was definitely something going on here. I showed him numbers, charts and graphs, but he wouldn’t, or perhaps couldn’t think about this.
Along the way, I went to a work conference and learned about generational differences- this hadn’t even occurred to me. My husband is eight and a half years older than me and the last of the baby-boomers. I am Gen-X. He views work as some sort of virtue. I have to admit that I love his work ethic- he is the hardest working man I know and that makes me feel safe. But I don’t share his compulsion to work. I view work as what you do in order to get money. Unless you would do your job for free, when you have all the money you are ever reasonably going to spend, why would you keep working?
And if all this wasn’t enough, the four years I waited to retire allowed a lot of growth in our portfolio. We probably need to spend more than we ever did when we were working- and he is not comfortable with this. I am frugal so that we will have money for the things we really want to do in retirement. I didn’t work hard just to HAVE money, I want to have the freedom to do whatever I want to with my time, and do and see the things I want to. He just likes to have it- it makes him feel safe.
We don’t agree about kids inheritances either. Attaining financial independence is one of the proudest achievements in my life (so far). We worked hard and saved hard and achieved it all on our own. I don’t want to take that away from our children by leaving them too much money. He would like to give them opportunities (to start a business perhaps) that we didn’t have. We’re still debating that one- hopefully we have plenty of time.
We’re making progress, sort of. He’s learned to like vacation and is mostly a good sport when I drag him all over the world with me. He now occasionally brings up things he’d like to do when we’re retired. He’s begun to ask questions when I talk about nerdy things like withdrawal rates and the optimal time to take Social Security. Some things he still doesn’t want to talk about- but that’s okay. I get it. This whole thing is a little weird for both of us. We have more money than either of us ever dreamed of. And quitting- its still scary.
What do you and your spouse agree or disagree on?
